


Robbie and Aunt Bobbi

by Zoya1416



Series: THE PATRICIAN'S BABY [7]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Baby-talk, The Game-werewolves, aunts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1645118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madam Roberta Meserole visits her great-nephew for the first time, when he's seven months old.  Havelock reflects on Robbie's mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Robbie and Aunt Bobbi

**Author's Note:**

> All Pratchett's, except Robbie.
> 
> This series is still going in reverse. Robbie is seven months old.

Madam Roberta Meserole burbled again to her seven month old great-nephew, holding him fondly. 

“Ro-ber-ta. Ooo say it. Ro-ber-ta.”

“The books say they can't pronounce “R's” very easily, Aunt Bobbi.”

“Oh? Izz dat twoo, 'ickle baby? Aunt Bobbi's 'ickle baby. Ooo can say 'Aunt Bobbi,' can't ooo?”

Lord Vetinari winced behind her back. It had been bad enough when she talked baby talk to her newest ginger cat. Having her practice on his son was many times more disagreeable.

“Please don't talk to him that way, Aunt Bobbi. I can't abide it. I'm happy you came to visit us.”—somehow implicit in that was “finally.” “But I must insist on abiding by his routine.”

She glanced up. “His routine? Oh, how modern. You have no idea how catch-as-catch-can it was when you were little. Your father and mother were so shatterbrained, moving from one city to another to escape bill-collectors, that they scarcely remembered to feed you, let alone keep a routine.”

“Please don't bring my parents into this, Aunt Bobbi.” Only after becoming a parent himself did he regret knowing so little of his own. His father was tall and thin (or was it only that all parents were tall to infants), with a booming, laughing voice. His mother was smaller, quieter, and he could not remember her well. He seemed to recall that she had a fondness for candied jellyfish, but that was it. Had he lived with them would he have found it easier to raise Robert? Or only learned what not to do?

He walked to the tall windows of his apartments and surveyed Ankh-Morpork. It was raining, but in a soft way which suggested it wanted to encourage flowers rather than smashing down everything in its path.

“I'm glad you had good weather for your trip,” he said, still facing the window.

“You don't need to be like that, Havelock. It was winter before. I couldn't visit.”

“Aunt Roberta.” He had a mild voice, but somehow conveyed to her a reproof, and to her surprise, it also conveyed a little dangerous tone which suggested that lying to him wasn't in her best interests.

“Havelock. I do regret not coming to you sooner.”

“I don't mind it so much for myself, but the newspapers made much of it.”

“Newspapers? Fit to wrap fish in and line a bird cage, and nothing else.”

“Sometimes I regret allowing a free press. The Times is the best of them, but it has to print headlines every day. If there isn't any news, they root around for anything half-way true. They noticed that you hadn't visited.”

He came back and sat down in a wing chair next to her sofa.

Past headlines had been:

“Lord Vetinari's Aunt Repudiates Child.” False.

"Madam Meserole Refuses Patrician's Plea for Help.” 

False, although he'd once written to invite her. THAT had gone out by diplomatic pouch, but could it have been found by one of Aunt Bobbi's servants?

“Patrician's Aunt: 'I Can't Love Him.'”

This one was the type so annoying true and false at the same time. If one dropped down the fold to read, it referred to a previous Patrician's aunt who'd expressed this sentiment after her nephew allegedly murdered her brother. There was no follow-up because the aunt somehow could not be found after this.

“Ant in UU scandal”  
Again, true. Ankh-Morpork subjects regarded spelling as optional and bought the paper only to learn about some finance-fiddling with ant-procurement for the UU HEX machine.

But lastly, the week before and most annoying:

“Patrician's Aunt Says: Keep Him in Barrel Until 15!”

He himself was the cause of that one when he'd joked that Roberta threatened to raise him in exactly that way. He'd told Drumknott that, but he couldn't remember when or where. The man wouldn't gossip. There must have been a maid or footman or groom who'd overheard him, and he couldn't torture them all. Or even fire them.

 

“Havelock, I am sorry. The thing is, I hate infants. I think the newspapers might have made more of a fuss if I'd come earlier and they'd noticed how much I detest the newborn.”

“Really? I did not know that.”

“I never told you. You came to me when you were five”—

“I thought I was three?”

“Five, three—I really can't remember when, but you were just at the age I found interesting.”

Robbie's father was hurt by this, on his son's account. A year before he'd never dreamed about having children, but now he was totally captivated. The crying was annoying, and the baby refused to eat things the books said were good for him, but otherwise he was a sweet, beautiful, adorable, uniquely wonderful—he clamped down on those sentiments. He was besotted, but didn't want others to know how much.

He'd even had to improve his own diet to tempt the little one to eat. The taste of this supper's mashed turnips lingered. You couldn't expect a man to drink only water after something like mashed carrots, so his wine consumption had increased, to one-half glass a day. Or a whole, when the cook tried kohlrabi. Robbie and Vetinari both put down their feet on Brussels sprouts. He would never mention this to the proud Sto Plains duchies which kept him well supplied with brassica for the baby.

“I didn't get to wait until he was interesting. He was dumped at my doorstep when he was a week old.”

She regarded him with astonishment. “Did you love him immediately?”

He thought about the weeks he couldn't sleep out of fear, and the shaming memory of the time he'd wrapped Robbie to his chest and raised a pistol crossbow to Sibyl Ramkin.

“Not maybe love, but bound up in protecting him and making sure he was safe. He slept with me for months after Sibyl said not to.”

“Sybil—you really loved her, didn't you?”

Why must his aunt be so nosy, inquiring into things none of her own business? Would he love her as much if she lived close enough to pry after him?

“I admired, and still admire, Sibyl Ramkin very much. I think she's beautiful, although I'd not mention it out loud while Sir Samuel was still alive. We have much in common politically. She makes me smile whenever we're at the same party.

“But she is one of the bossiest people I've ever known. When we were undergoing Cotillion, she could not be taught to follow her partner, so they let her lead. She's not the snob the rest of her class is, but she's still got the unconscious superiority of a woman who knows all eight of her great-grandparents. And I despise her little dragons. When you dine at Ramkin Manor, they're like cats and come up to people who hate them.”

He looked at the ginger tom which had now rubbed around his knees, marking him as its subject and food provider, and brushed away hairs.

“Then the hateful little things put their heads in your lap while you're eating and spit corrosives which ruin your clothes. I cannot fathom why she cares about them.”

“So she was what attracted you to Tallulah? She's very tall and blond also.”

He realized that if he didn't talk she'd still pry after him like a fish-wife winkling out clams.

“Tallulah was—is a different kind of woman. Sybil is like a huge warm oven. Inviting, soothing. You want to hold and protect her, even though she thinks she doesn't need protection. Tallulah—you know I was only—with her—for one night, don't you? I think everyone in Ankh-Morpork knows that.”

It had been deeply repugnant when the newspapers dug up the most personal, intimate details of his life. He had wanted to put them to the torch when they speculated, correctly, about his single night's congress with his child's mother. Then another paper found some iconographs, in color, of Miss Tallulah Tallthorpe bathing on the beach in Klatch, and his reputation in the city had gone up. They still thought of him as a cynical dark fearsome bastard, but a dark bastard who could get up to mischief with a blond gorgeous—gorgeous—gorgeousness like this, even once—Well! He must be quite a man, who could survive having her without getting his head bitten off.

Bobbi nodded.

“Tallulah was one of those impossible golden goddesses men would challenge gods for, attempt impossible tasks, if she hadn't done them herself already. She has truly been everywhere and met everyone, from the Ramtops, Uberwald, the Agatean empire. Four Ecks, all over Klatch, Tsort, Omnia—she likes warm places, she told me. I mostly listened to her. I have no interest in hunting, but she makes it fascinating.” He regarded the ginger cat, now in his lap and practicing the hated “oh, I'm only stretching my claws here, don't mind me” maneuver.

“You remember Mustrum Ridcully—the Arch Chancellor of UU? He would enjoy immensely talking to her about crossbows, fishing tackle, spears, nets, whatever it took to capture and kill animals. But she's interested in politics, too, or at least what it takes to survive in every country on the Disc.

“She's repeating her travels now to draw and paint landscapes, since, as she told me, 'I'm too damn old to get up at three o'clock in the morning to catch the local legendary fish. And likely enough it won't be edible anyway.'”

“She was married once, wasn't she?”

He nodded. “For about eight years to another hunter. I do not think she has gotten over his death—trampled by zebus. It was around then that she renounced hunting.”

His voice rose higher in an unconscious tone. “Did you know she beat the Game once?”

“The game?” Roberta was holding Robbie now in an uncertain way since he'd stopped talking to her. He was standing up in her lap while she held him, pulling at her earrings.

“The Game. With a capital G. The Lore of the Werewolves—they chase a man, or woman, over the mountain for five miles. If the human wins, they get four hundred crowns. If they lose—they're eaten.”

He paused, remembering the vision she'd created for him. A tall, golden, warrior woman, running naked through the snow, snatching off branches and hurling them back at her pursuers, leaping over streams, running up hills, doubling back on them, lungs pumping hugely as her strong legs flashed in the sun—long, long legs. And laughing! She'd told him she'd laughed because it was a jolly good run and she didn't plan on losing! 

“She finally sat there, nude on an island in the middle of the Bonk River, and told them to toss her money on the edge of the bank and leave. And they did!” 

He cut off those thoughts and discreetly crossed his own legs. It had been about then, that certain evening, that he was entranced, exactly that, put into a trance, and knew that he desired her. He had to have her—he, Havelock Vetinari, the bloodless—was inspired to have the woman who laughed about the Game.

Roberta pulled her earring away from Robbie and told him, “No!” He blinked and his face pouted at her words.

Vetinari automatically brushed the cat off and picked Robbie up, letting the baby stand on his lap, pulling at his ears. 

“You need to talk to him, Havelock. They're little mimics. I don't like children, but I've studied them. I heard Drumknott taking to him—you don't want Robbie saying “da-da' to him now, do you?”

An instant's vision passed through Vetinari's mind. His secretary was slight, of slim build and mild eyes. Tallulah weighed twice what he did and was almost a foot taller. She could snap him in two just by sitting on his lap.

He chuckled. “No, I don't.”

He pulled Robbie up to face him and hesitantly said, “Father. Say Father.”

“One of those hard consonants, Havelock—see, I do read baby books. Try “da-da.”  
It's easier for him.”

“Da-da?” It was ludicrous. But the little face turned up to him, listening.

“By the way, do you know how tall Tallulah is?” 

“She's—I think she's over six feet tall. No, I know she is. She's several inches taller than me, and I'm five-eleven. Why do you want to know?”

“Hmm, let's see here,” and she muttered a little, “the article I read in the Dr. Spookie's Baby Book said there was this conversion—he'll be about six-five.”

“Robbie will be six-feet five inches? That's Carrot's size!”

He envisioned his son bending down to him as Carrot did. If Robbie was as broad and blond as Carrot—amazing that any progeny of his should be that large.

“I guess I'll have to put a brick on his head!” Which was the silly thing parents invented from generation to generation.

“Would ooo like dat, Robbie? Would ooo like your da-da to put a brick on oor head?”

“Da-da!” said the little—not so little—one, and grabbed his nose, squeezing it.

The explosion of happiness in his chest was greater that anything he'd ever known.

His aunt smiled at him, and he smiled back. With this one little person he'd doubled his whole family, and he hadn't even suspected how marvelous that could be.

“Yeb. I'b oor da-da. Leb go by doze.”


End file.
